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Comment by oditogre | Hacker News Reader

Re: Boulder: Why not Fort Collins? Close to Denver, beautiful area, nice weather, college town, and - more than anything else - the place is just loaded with young people, and local businesses seem geared towards a younger market more so than most any place I can think of.

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I'm thinking of moving to Boulder from Silicon Valley (Palo Alto) simply because the cost of doing business is so insanely high here. My apartment rent has gone up $1200 over the past 5 years, the traffic sucks, taxes are high, wages are inflated, and we don't need to raise capital.

There are ways to deal with these factors (BART, biking to work, cooking at home, handing out equity in lieu of cash, etc...). But, why bother when there are more affordable places to do business in the U.S.?

I'm looking for a place in the U.S. that meets three criteria: (1) a great year-round outdoor lifestyle with lots of hiking trails, mountain biking terrain, and possibly rock-climbing and/or skiing (2) young, smart people (3) affordable living (rental prices, food prices, traffic) (4) a nearby university with a top-40 School of Engineering (5) not a resort/retirement community

Right now I'm looking at Ventura, CA (ocean sports are a good substitute for moutain sports), Boulder, or Bozeman Montanta. Neither Ventura nor Boulder are "cheap", but they are a bargain compared to Palo Alto. Ventura is within 40min of UCSB (Santa Barbara is too expensive) and Boulder is obviously a college town.

We're keeping our servers in a Bay Area datacenter, but there really is no reason to stay here since our company is profitable and cash-flow positive (an algorithmic hedge fund specializing in OTC energy derivatives).

I've never been to Fort Collins. How does it compare with Boulder?

There is no reason to be in Silicon Valley if your company is profitable, cash-flow positive, and self-financing. If not, then Silicon Valley is a superb place to raise capital; however, be prepared to pay dearly for it (both in equity and in cost of doing business).

Thanks!

There's one reason if you are profitable..

Hiring.

As a Colorado resident, let me say that I'm pretty sure you'd be very happy in Boulder. According to USNEWS, CU-Boulder is #40 SoE. The other 4 criteria you have describe Boulder very accurately.

As for Fort Collins, I haven't been there much, but it is definitely geographically much more "out there" than Boulder. I think FC is about 60 miles north of Denver, while Boulder is about 25 miles northwest. The 25 miles between Denver and Boulder are pretty built up, at least by Colorado standards, while the drive to Fort Collins from Denver is pretty desolate.

Boulder is a bit more expensive than Fort Collins, but coming from the Bay Area, I'm not sure you'd notice much. It's all mighty cheap on the Front Range compared to anywhere near coastal CA cities.

I lived in Boulder from 2002 to 2005. I spent 2 months in Boulder this summer trying to figure out if it's the place to be. I love it. I love the quality of life. I love the relaxed atmosphere, the perfect weather & proximity to skiing. TechStars is there, Boulder OpenCoffee Club is active and there is some VC, as far as I can tell. There's a decent pool of relatively cheap talent in the Denver/Boulder area, CU has a reasonably well regarded engineering school, Sun and IBM have campuses there. StartupWeekend was born there.

I couldn't find the energy. The pace is an opiate. I couldn't find the noise. I couldn't find the 20-somethings actively changing things in tech; it seems like if you have any drive there, you leave. The vibe is bohemian (it's Boulder), and part of me would love to, as pg commented, move 10,000 geeks there and give a $500m endowment to CU to try to architect a new SV in the Rockies, but it's missing something. It seems like the scales are tipped 75/25 between play/work.

Please prove me wrong. I'd be there next week if I thought the startup infrastructure (developers, investors, etc) was active enough.

Thought about Research Triangle Park in North Carolina? Got Duke University, UNC Chapel Hill, and NC State close by. Close to the beach, the mountains. Weather is great, though it does get pretty muggy in the summer. And the cost of living is reasonable. And it has a strong entrepreneurial community (cednc.org). It's certainly not a huge city, but it's got a lot going for it...though, it would mean moving to the east coast.

Sorry, Top 40 engineering means nothing.

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